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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Real estate market analysis, 7/24/08
  • Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:10:55 -0500


On Jul 25, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

This article seems as lucid and balanced as any I have read in the
last year:

Good article, yes, lucid, but I'm having trouble seeing it as 'balanced'. It
is, I'd say from my other readings on the subject, accurate, but balancing
what with what?

I found the author to be neither unduly optimistic nor unduly pessimistic. I find that to be balanced. Nobody, repeat many times, nobody, nobody knows for sure what the future of the world, the country, the economy will do, nor the areas of energy, finance, real estate, manufacturing, etc., not to mention population and natural conditions numerous and well known. Many people are qualified to make educated guesses. Many do enough research and have sufficient common sense to make plausible predictions. No one knows what's going to happen. You choose your expert and make your investment. The balanced view is that things may become better or they may become worse. Some find only one possibility. You, James, appear to be in the latter camp. We must therefore conclude that you are unbalanced. You would possibly agree. Yes? No?

But the same people that correctly (uncancannily

I like the new word. May I use it sometime? With attribution, of course.

correctly) predicted the
current debacle when the cheerleaders and whistlers-past-the- graveyard, were
eternally predicting the bottom ... those same peple are now suggesting there may
be no bottom!

If that is so, then in the case of those individuals, mania prevails and common sense has fled the field. The economies of the developed countries of the world have long waxed and waned. I am unable to think of any major country whose economy has sunk to no bottom, just eternal sinking.

New houses are now sitting empty for a long time, even here in the backwater.

In some places they are succumbing to vandals and the elements they've been
standing unoccupied so long.

New houses in many areas are sitting empty for long periods. The developers and builders and financial backers of those homes made bad decisions. That often happens in a free, capitalist society. There are parallels in many economic areas.

The paradigm is shifting. Before the only pattern we could see
is that "new households" would inevitably form as people retired, grown
children moved out, immigrants came in, people bought secong homes .. etc. etc. etc.
But it looks as though that isn't happening. Households are consoldating
much faster than they are forming.

That is, many of these houses may *never* sell.

In some areas migration will only be outward for a long time. This has happened in many rural areas before. In those areas, many homes may well not sell for a very long time. Some may one day simply be recycled. You, James, should feel fortunate that you live in such a depressed area.

So there may be no acutal balance to the story. Like Tevye in "Fiddler on
the Roof" when he examined the question deeply enough, we may be concluding that
"There is on other hand!"


Tevye was too pessimistic about his optimism. Taken far enough, that attitude can be fatal.

Expect change and you will not be disappointed.





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